


The Passenger

by BoxWineConfessions



Series: JJBek Week 2017 [3]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Bottom JJ, Drifter Otabek, Hitchhiker AU, Hitchhiker JJ, M/M, Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Teenage Runaway JJ, implied past sexual abuse, implied prostitution, posessive otabek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-20 05:59:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11914677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoxWineConfessions/pseuds/BoxWineConfessions
Summary: “I’m your guardian angel JJ.” There’s a certain lilt in Otabek’s voice. It’s playful, mysterious, and it’s guaranteed to lead to his own undoing. It sends shivers down his spine. Otabek takes a fist full of JJ’s hair, and grips his cock by the base.





	1. The Passenger

**Author's Note:**

> For best results, listen to "the passenger" by Iggy Pop on repeat.

_I am a passenger_  
_And I ride and I ride_  
_I ride through the city's backside_  
_I see the stars come out of the sky_  
_Yeah, they're bright in a hollow sky_  
_You know it looks so good tonight_

“Hey,” the voice is rough and gravelly, like getting scraped against pavement or sandpaper but in all of the right ways. It sends a jolt down his spine and settles at the small of his back. “Straighten up your face,” the voice commands. JJ looks up, expecting to see a grizzled old face attached to that voice. The stranger’s voice sounds so rough that it desperately needs to be soothed with a whiskey, neat. Except, the face isn’t grizzled at all. He sees someone who looks about his age. He has a square set jawline. He has dark eyes that imply he’s seen and survived much more than JJ has.  

“I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

The stranger cocks a single brow at him, and it makes the warm feeling at the base of his spine spread outward, embracing him around the sides and across his stomach.

“I’m fine!” JJ insists. Because he is. Sure, he was crying at a truck stop in God-only-knows where. Sure, he barreled out of the cab of some truck when the guy that picked him up and shoved his hands on top of his dick. It’s just, he didn’t take him anywhere. He didn’t even offer to buy him something to eat.

JJ isn’t some green around the edges rookie. Sure, he’s only been on the road for a few days, but he’s dreamed of this day for as long as he can remember, and now he’s free. He’s got the lord, and the virgin, and St. Christopher medal on a thin chain around his neck.

When he sees the stranger, his mouth goes dry.  The stranger doesn’t carry immense secrets in bags underneath his eyes or in a hump in his back. JJ hasn’t seen that in quite some time, and he has to wonder if this man is sent from the lord to help him. Or, he could just as easily be another demon sent to lead him further astray. He’d barely made it out of the city when a man offered him a ride to Ottowa. Then he got JJ down on his knees and took him in the opposite direction to Renfrew.

“You’re not.” And the stranger extracts a handkerchief from within his leather jacket and offers it to him.

“Don’t need it. I’m fine. I’m king of the open road.”

“Suit yourself,” and the stranger puts the handkerchief back into his pocket. Then, from that very pocket, he extracts a crumpled pack of Winston’s and a zippo. He flicks open the lighter in a single fluid movement, and bites a cigarette out of the pack. With his teeth, he tears the filter off. Then, he lights the butt.

JJ wipes his eyes off with his shirt sleeve. Then, he sits up straight instead of melting into the low brick wall near the payphone. The stranger doesn’t back away. He blows smoke into JJ’s face as he huffs and he puffs on his cigarette in short determined drags. He hits it like he needs it.  He hits it like maybe, just maybe, he’s just as anxious as JJ. 

JJ tries to rub the tears from his eyes, but they’re blurry and burning red. The stars he sees when he stops rubbing his eyes catch fire and melt with the sunset glow making everything in his vision burn white hot. When it fades, there’s nothing but the silhouette of the stranger against the patchwork quilt that is the sunset sky. Dark purple of night fades into pink, and yellow, and blue around the edges. The colors and the pattern all melt together in one muddled mess, with JJ and the stranger in the middle.

The stranger looks at him as if each breath is pained. His jaw is clenched tightly shut. JJ wants to be friends. JJ wants him to go away and leave him alone. JJ wants him to protect him. If anyone out here could, JJ thinks it would be him.  He has something that JJ doesn’t. He has something that JJ wants to learn, but he knows that it cannot be taught.

“Wanna smoke?” He turns the unlit end around, with the cherry dangerously close to his own hands and offers it to JJ. JJ accepts, takes a drag, and coughs and sputters. Immediately the other man takes the cigarette back.

“You’re going to get eaten up alive.”

“I’m fine!” JJ insists. “I don’t need any help. Not from anyone. I can do this myself. Wanna know why?” JJ tells him the answer even though his mouth is open, like he wants to say, “no.”

“Cause I’m smarter, and I’m faster than anyone else in Toronto, and I didn’t leave all of that behind for just anything. I have a plan, and a dream. I don’t need help. Especially not from you. “

“Right.” The stranger takes another long drag from his cigarette, flicks it, and then lights up another. The wind whips around them both, and he can hear people shouting at the truck stop. An eighteen wheeler rolls in with its engine roaring, but it’s quiet between them. Lifetimes seem to slide by rapid-fire on the road. JJ isn’t the same person he was this morning, and he’s not the same person he was yesterday. In the sixty or so seconds that it takes for the stranger to size him up, he dies and is reborn a thousand times over. Each new iteration grows stronger under the stranger’s heavy gaze. He might be getting eaten up alive, but he’s going to be like Jonah and emerge from the whale triumphant. 

It ends when JJ can see through the cloud of smoke. Something softens in his eyes.

Then, the wind picks up, blows it away, and then he looks stone faced and cold once again. “Name’s Otabek, what about yours?”

“JJ.” He says. “Jean-Jacques. Jean-Jacques Leroy. Jean sometimes. King JJ.”

“King of the open road?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” and JJ puffs out his chest.

“Want something to eat?” He pursues his lips together in a grimace, as if he already regrets what it is that he said.

His stomach has been growling since that morning. They guy he’d rode in with last night wanted more than he’d been willing to give. JJ spent the last of his money sometime yesterday because he needed a toothbrush. So, JJ opens his mouth to say, ‘yes,” but the words don’t come out right away.

“There’s a diner over there,” and Otabek gestures to just beyond the filing station. He can see the green and red neon lights that spell out, “INER,” in flickering neon. “The food is good.”

JJ nods, and twists his mouth into a big toothy grin. He’s gonna get out ahead on this one. “I want a sandwich, and fries,” JJ insists. “I want dessert,” he continues. “I don’t want to just get water okay? I want a coke.” His feet _bounce_ in the thin rubber soles of his canvas tennis shoes. He hasn’t felt this good since he walked over to the off ramp twelve days ago, stuck his thumb out, and never looked back. Of course, all of this is so much easier when they look good.

The stranger pauses at a jet black motorcycle. On the rear fender is strapped a bag. From one of the side pockets, he extracts a fresh pack of Winston’s. He tears away the cellophane with his teeth, and for a moment, the plastic simply hangs in the corner of his mouth.

“Is this your bike?”

Otabek nods.

“Do you like it?”

Otabek nods.

“It’s a Harley, right?”

Otabek nods. At this point, he’s moved onward, past the bike and toward the diner. JJ has to jog a few paces to catch up with him.

“I’m gonna get one like that someday.” As soon as he makes it out to Montreal and gets a job working on the rail line.

Otabek purses his lip again. There’s something playful in his eyes. It’s something that seems far more dangerous than anyone else that’s picked him up so far. He looks like he knows something JJ doesn’t, and isn’t afraid to let him know it.

“I am!” he insists. “A 750, because they’re really powerful. They’re really fast too. I read that in _Mechanic Power_ magazine. You get that mag? I used to get that mag.” Okay, his father did, but he routinely read it cover to cover every month.

Otabek shakes his head ‘no.’

“I want it, because it’s just so JJ style, you know?” And as he talks he can feel his face flush red hot. He sucks in air like each syllable is his last breath.

“I don’t,” Otabek says. They approach the diner, and Otabek holds the door open for him. Then, as soon as he walks through, Otabek’s somehow beating him to the second set of double doors, and opening those for him too. JJ can feel the grease cling to his skin as soon as they walk in. His shoes stick to the tile floor.

“Go sit down,” and he can feel a hot puff of air against his back through his too thin t-shirt. He didn’t pack well at all. He didn’t have time. “Over there,” and he’s being nudged toward a booth.

JJ sinks down into the red and white vinyl. His heart thunders in his ears as he wonders how someone Otabek’s size could make him feel so small.

Across the diner, Otabek stands at the juke box. He leans backwards slightly, checking his reflection in the glass, and then he runs a small black tooth comb through his hair. He flips through the songs, and he’s just so cool. He has to know _how_ someone can be that cool. God, the haircut, the bike, the jacket…

Then, as his fingers walk across the chunky plastic buttons, JJ sees it. It’s something that he’s seen in himself a thousand times in the mirror. A single crack in his expression, as his face pulls into a long melancholy frown that goes for years and for miles.

It’s something he’s not supposed to see.

Otabek’s bulletproof veneer is snapped firmly back into place by the time he walks back to the booth. He slides onto the side opposite JJ. In no time flat, JJ can feel the thick sole of a leather boot press against the place where the hem of his pants meets his ankle.

The waitress comes over, and whips out her pad without so much as showing them the menu. “Black coffee, Beka?” It’s soft and familiar, and everything this strange man _isn’t_ to him.

“Yeah.” Otabek shakes a Winston out, but doesn’t strike it. “A malt for him.”

JJ opens his mouth to argue. Because, he’d rather have a coke. Refills. But, Otabek interrupts. He waves his hand in front of him dismissively, “And a coke. And a sandwich, and fries, and a piece of cherry pie to go. I’ll have the same. ”

When the waitress turns to go, he pops the Winston in his mouth, bites the filter, lights it up. The motions have been so frequent in the brief time they’ve been together, and JJ feels as if he knows them well. “The malts are good. You like sweet stuff right?”

“Yeah,” JJ responds. His throat feels dry. Suddenly at a loss for words.

“Cause you’re sweet. Right?” and there’s a flicker in his eyes, amber colored like whiskey. Like the sound of his voice. Dangerous. It’s in that look that JJ finds his confidence again.

“Kinda nervy to just order for someone like that. You didn’t even know what exactly I wanted.”

“Does it matter?” Otabek blows a ring of smoke toward his face. The way that he thinks he can just jump in and do what he wants pisses him off. “What you want?” For a split second his raspberry pink tongue darts out and parts his permanently clamped shut lips. It makes every bit of fight in JJ dry up immediately. Yet, he keeps talking, as if he’d saved all of these words for this very moment, and not a second more. “What do you need? I wonder….” And then, the heavy boot clad toes at his ankle are gone. He parts his legs almost _too_ gently with his leather clad feet, and presses ever so lightly, against his crotch. He can feel the dense weight and the increasing pressure through the thick denim. “If you ever think about that _King_ JJ?” 

The waitress plops down the malt in front of him in a thick glass. Otabek doesn’t move his foot.

JJ unwraps the spoon from the tightly wrapped paper napkin. He can feel his heart rattle against his chest it’s beating so loudly. So much for _not_ getting eaten up alive.

He knocks the spoon against the side of the glass three or four times trying to desperately get a bite. Each time, he gets a bite, he hits the side of the glass and spills it back in. Intrusive thoughts  fill his head, “ _why do you like this so much?”_ and “ _does he know how hard you are now? He can’t know, because boots? Right?”_ And, “ _Why is he even trying to be nice? Doesn’t he know that you’re dirty? He’s got to know.”_

So, JJ just talks over the ugly thoughts that won’t leave him alone with the pleasant ones. He talks about the stuff that he thinks about to escape whatever it is that is going on around him that he _doesn’t_ want to be present for. “I did plan this out really well. I got my social insurance card out of the firebox when everyone was at church and I had the flu.  Then I went down to China Town all by myself. I have a girlfriend who lives there. Her name is Isabella, and I told her not to cry, but she did just a little bit. Then, I told her to wait for me. You know, for after I get my job in Montreal. I read _On the Road._ you know it?”

“It’s trash.” Otabek finally says. He reaches across the table, snags the bright red maraschino cherry off of the top of his malt. He takes it into his mouth and extracts the bright red stem pressing it slightly against his lower lip.

The action makes JJ swallow thickly.

“You should try _Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.”_ Otabek rips the paper off of the straw and shoves it into JJ’s malt. “It’s better.” Then he adds, “Eat. You’re hungry.”

* * *

When they emerge from the diner, its pitch black outside. Otabek claps a firm hard hand over his shoulder as the chrome coated doors slam shut behind them. Otabek thrusts two silver quarters into his hand. He can feel the ridges along the edges against his palm. “You can use it for the payphone. Or,” he breathes hotly into his neck. “There’s a dispenser in the bathroom. Get a condom. Sunset. 109.”

“The door will be open?” JJ tries to hide the uncertainty in his voice. There’s just no way he’s going back, and even though he’s never actually… he’s gonna use the money for….

“Yeah,” Otabek says firmly. Then, JJ’s being spun around. Otabek’s lips are being pressed to his own, and they’re chapped. Otabek’s mouth tastes thick like black burned coffee. He pulls away all too soon, and his knees knock together. “Gotta get something.” Otabek smooths the collar of his t-shirt back down. “Be there real soon.”

 JJ fishes one of the pocketed quarters out of his pocket. There’s a penny, and a nickel, and the keys he doesn’t need anymore, and the torn up fortune on red paper Isabella gave him, and there, in the corner, by his thigh… Finally. JJ feeds each coin into the machine slowly, turns the crank, and when nothing comes out, he smashes the side of the machine.

A single foil wrapper spills out. His ears ring, his stomach feels tight, and he has to jiggle the lock to get out of the bathroom.

JJ escapes the bathroom, despite the fact that his feet stick to the tiles. Outside isn’t much better. A lizard crawls across the asphalt, past the orb of displaced light from the lamps by the gas station, and into the inky blackness. Flies swarm around the lamp. He can see the bright red cherry embers of cigarettes in the semi parking lot, but it’s too dark to see the faces they’re attached to. 

JJ crosses the expanse of the parking lot that spans from the gas station to the motel. In the dark, it is difficult to find room 109. The sunset has a big gaudy sign with a pink and yellow sun, and he manages to find it by the borrowed neon light. The door is propped open, ever so slightly.

Otabek stands in front of the television. With one hand, he fiddles with the remote. With the other, he twists the tab of a tallboy of Miller Light to the side. From the corner of his mouth droops a cigarette. He’s not wearing a shirt, and JJ can see every ripple of muscle in his body. He can see the thick dark hair that rests just above his belt. He can see the pebbled brown skin of his nipples. There’s thick black ink on the inside of his arm, and although JJ can’t see the details of the tattoo, he knows that it’s cool. Otabek is cool incarnate.

JJ swallows thickly. Otabek looks at him; the remote goes slack in his grasp and he leaves the television on some black and white vampire movie. “Come in,” he orders. “Got you something.” Then he moves to a brown paper bag setting on the same table as the television. He shuffles around his own can of beer and the remote, and then he extracts a bottle of red Night Train.  He twists the cap off with a pop. The sound makes chills run down JJ’s spine.

JJ watches the white rubber tips of his shoes shuffle across the carpet. He can hear the door slam shut behind him, but it feels like the time his older brother threw him off the dock at the lakehouse, and he couldn’t swim to the surface. His chest is tight, sounds are distorted, his eyes are open, but he isn’t sure what it is that he sees.

“Cause you’re real sweet.”

Then, the thick glass lip of the bottle is pressed up to his lips. JJ lets the thick liquid slide down his throat. It tastes like cough syrup. It reminds him of sitting on the kitchen counter when he was a kid. It reminds him of having his legs wrapped around mama’s middle and coughing and snotting onto her shoulder when he was sick.

“I can tell JJ,” Otabek says while Jean coughs and sputters at the foul taste of the liquid.

JJ takes a few more sips. Each time the liquid tastes better and better. As he drinks, Otabek runs his hands down his sides, toys with the hem of his shirt, and keeps doing that thing where he reminds JJ constantly that he’s in control.

When the bottle is half done, Otabek takes it from him, and setting it aside.

Otabek is on him again. He’s got hard hand clamped round his wrist, and the other fisted tight into his hair. Otabek dips his tongue into his mouth right away, then pulls back and takes his lower lip between his teeth. He bites down hard until JJ can feel the pinprick sensation of tears in the corner of his eyes.

It hurts so bad that JJ pulls away, only to dive back in. It hurts like hell, but it feels so good. Otabek bites his lip until it feels fat and bruised. Simultaneously, Otabek’s got his knee jammed between his legs.

His hands work their way around JJ’s body to palm at his ass. “Damn you’re pretty.” Then Otabek has a hand wedged between them, and he’s palming his crotch through his jeans like he knows he’s been half hard since the diner.

Otabek peels away his shirt, and the St. Cristopher medal hits against his bare chest. Otabek touches his fingers against the cool bronze medal and traces the design. “You’re pretty and you’re mine now.”

Otabek flashes him a dark and dangerous look and then he’s on him again: nothing but teeth, lips, skin. He starts at the lobe of his ears. No matter how much JJ moans, begs, and whimpers, he doesn’t relent for a moment. He alternates between blunt pressure raking his teeth downward and blunt pressure from biting him directly. He marks a trail down his neck and his chest.

JJ’s everything becomes the white hot burn of pain that is Otabek.  He runs a finger over his neck to make sure that he isn’t bleeding, but he never tells Otabek to stop. JJ hasn’t been on the road long, but there’s already been a few times that he thought that maybe God had forsaken him. There’s been a few times he was going to die. The guy that picked him up and was on too many uppers, the guy that held a knife to his throat and told him to suck. JJ is going to die tonight, but in the possible way.

No one has ever gotten him worked up like this before. “I’m _not_ yours.” Like no one has ever used that line on him before. “You think you can buy me dinner, and then you own me? My girl doesn’t own me. My family doesn’t own me. Who the hell do you think you are?” The words are awkward in his tongue, like he’s trying to talk with his mouth full. His voice barely sounds like his own, sobbing and broken, and they’ve barely even begun.

JJ pulls back. JJ pushes back. He bites back, and watches mottled marks of his own appear on Otabek’s skin, but it’s all to no avail. Otabek turns them around, and slams him up against the nicotine yellow drywall. Otabek grabs his wrists and pins them over his head. He palms his crotch until there’s a big ugly wet patch on the front of his jeans. Then, he pushes him downward.

JJ sinks to his knees.

“Who do I think I am?” Otabek arches a thick brow. His smirk is sharp and unapologetic. He can hear the _tink_ of a belt being undone. Otabek pulls his cock over the waistband of his underwear.

On instinct, JJ opens his mouth. He’s so ready. He _needs_ it because he’s bad, and he’s broken, and he’s dirty. Just like Father Durand told him he was. 

“I’m your guardian angel JJ.” There’s a certain lilt in Otabek’s voice. It’s playful, mysterious, and it’s guaranteed to lead to his own undoing. It sends shivers down his spine. Otabek takes a fist full of JJ’s hair, and grips himself by the base.

JJ accepts him immediately lapping at the tip. Otabek presses himself in deeper, “C’mon. Don’t pretend to be shy.”

So, he sinks further down on Otabek’s cock. He relaxes his throat and slides in real slow. He goes down, and down until there’s a ringing sound in his ears, his nose stats to run, and he has to squint his eyes just to breathe.

“Good boy.” Otabek touches the side of his face so softly. It almost makes him forget about the throbbing angry marks on his neck.

JJ can feel him twitch in his mouth. He can feel the thick veins against his tongue. He tastes like sweat, he smells like musk. He needed this, so badly. Otabek thrusts into him. JJ tries to wrap his hand around Otabek's cock so he can jerk him while he sucks. Otabek bats his hand away from the base of his cock, and _fucks_ his mouth relentlessly. He’s lied to himself so much since he left home: he’s fine, he hates sucking cock for small bills, he’s gonna find a better life. He’s tired of lying, and he’s tired of running. He feels used, and he loves every minute of it.  

Otabek tousles his hair. His thrusts become rough and uneven. It takes more and more effort for JJ not to gag on his cock. He’s gonna make this cocky bastard come.

Otabek has other ideas. Just as soon as Otabek pulled him onto his cock, he’s pushing him off. “Not yet.” Next thing he knows, his fingers are jammed down JJ’s throat, and he’s sucking on them just like he was sucking on his cock. He starts with just two, and stretches his mouth to add a third. He pulls at the thin skin at the corner of his mouth, and presses up against his soft palette. “You looked so sad and innocent out there by the payphone,” Otabek scoffs. “How long have you been on the road?” Then, he extracts his fingers from his mouth.

“Twelve days,” JJ responds. His voice sounds raw and hoarse.

“You’ve been sucking cock for a lot longer than twelve days.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “I’m the best. Lemme show you. You didn’t even let me show you this thing I can do with my tongue. Let me show you that. You can come on my face. Or-or I’ll swallow,” and he just keeps talking. The condom in his pocket is never forgotten.

“You’ve never fucked before have you?” He’s blunt and to the point fisting his cock with one hand, and tilting JJ’s chin upward with the other. “Don’t tell me you’re scared.”

“No way. I’ve fucked lots of times. My girlfriend-”

“Don’t be. I’ll make it good for you.”

“I’m not scared.”

Otabek helps him to his feet, walks him backwards the few scant steps to the unmade bed. His knees hit, and he’s being pushed downward. Otabek undoes his jeans with one hand. “Trust me.”

“I told you. I’m not scared!” Then JJ wriggles out of his pants and his shoes. He throws the condom onto the bed.  Otabek discards the rest of his clothes and pulls him into another smoldering kiss. Their cocks brush together, and JJ arches up into it desperate for more contact, more friction, more everything.  

“So I don’t have to finger you open, nice and sweet.” Otabek is flipping him over and pinning his arm against his back. It pisses him off, how Otabek can be so much smaller than him and flip him around like he’s a woman.

“So much for being my guardian angel,” JJ spits back. He’s so desperate to not let him see another crack. He’s already seen too many. The fact of the matter remains, the only time anyone’s ever touched his ass he kicked them _hard,_ and then he ran down the alleyway with his dick still out.

Otabek spreads his cheeks. He makes a throaty noise, his lips smack together, and he can _feel_ the thick wet blob of spit slide down his crack and over his hole. There’s a bruise on the back of his thigh from where he got grabbed by a bouncer at a bar in Kingston. Otabek grabs the spot, and digs into the abused flesh with his thumb. “No one marks you but me now.”

“You’re really bad at taking hints. You know that?”

Otabek smears the spit around his hole. He can feel pressure, then the burn of his finger pressing inside. Everything hurts with Otabek. Everything burns. Yet, its different from getting smacked around and left in the middle of nowhere. It feels good, and he deserves every ache, and every pain.

“I could say the same for you.” Then there’s more pressure. Another finger.

JJ bucks his hips at the intrusion and revels in the feeling of his cock against the rough threadbare sheets.

“I brought some lotion from the bathroom.” The crinkle of the condom wrapper, and a little fumbling behind him is all the warning JJ gets. More wetness, more pressure, and then he feels like he’s being split in two. The biting, the fingering, pinching his nipples until they were puffy and sore was nothing in comparison to this pain.

“Relax,” Otabek commands. He’s biting his shoulder again, attacking the already red and abused skin.

“How am I supposed to relax when you’re huge?”

“The biggest you’ve had?” He chuckles darkly into his ear.  

“Yeah,” JJ agrees. “Definitely the biggest I’ve had. Ah-Otabek damn. You’re long,” He says as Otabek just keeps pushing his cock in deeper and deeper. “Thick too. Otabek,” he moans. They like that. They always like that when he moans like the whore that he knows that he is.

“I liked you better when you had a cock in your mouth.”  Otabek grabs his hips, pulls him upward, and pounds into him setting a brutal pace.  Each thrust is an equal mixture of pleasure-pain-want. With each thrust he vows he’s going to beg Otabek to stop. He’s too big, and too rough, and he can feel the tears stream down his face. With each thrust the request dies in his throat. It feels too good to stop even though his whole body from his fingers to his toes throb in agony. Otabek hits this spot deep inside that he didn’t even know existed. Each nudge of Otabek’s cock from inside feels like his own dick is being touched. In reality, it is woefully neglected, straining, and hard.  

Everything feels pulsing hot: his bruised skin, his ass, his cock, his tearstained eyes. Otabek grunts into his ear, and JJ can hear the deep timbre of his own voice, but knows not what he says. The tears that stream down his face are a constant along with the brutal pace that Otabek sets.

He flips them over so that he’s on his back and Otabek hovers over him. JJ no longer feels like he’s going to be eaten up alive. He feels like he’s been shot up and strung out, and he’s completely at Otabek’s mercy to get another fix.  JJ desperately tries to hide his face. He doesn’t want anyone to see him crying like this. He doesn’t want Otabek to stop fucking him like the whore he is.

“Don’t hide from me.” Otabek pulls his hands away from his face, and kisses him. The kiss is open mouthed, sloppy, and almost romantic. He chases it up with a smaller smack on the lips when they part, and as stupid as it may be, it makes JJ feel special. Otabek’s hand finds his cock. “Come for me.”

Another thrust, another pump of his cock. “Do it JJ.” Another slap of skin against skin. “Don’t make me wait.”

“I can’t” JJ desperately tries to explain. “I can’t.”

Otabek leans in, bites him hard on the collarbone. Otabek bites him so hard that his toes curl. Otabek bites him so hard that he swears he blacks out for a few seconds from all the pain and he’s pulled back round only when he’s shooting come across both of their stomachs and Otabek is pulsing deep inside.

Bruised. Bloodied. Used. The only thing that would’ve made it better is if Otabek hadn’t made him buy a condom.

* * *

JJ dreams of having to go back home. He dreams of having to go back to confessional with father Durand. JJ dreams of his older brothers finding out what a dirty slut he is. They all stand around him, and judge him, and tell him that they don’t love him anymore.

Then, a firm voice drags him out of the darkness. “JJ.” It’s a good effort, but the darkness is too strong. He’s stuck in the confessional. He’s locked away in the tabernacle. Father Durand is never going to let him out.

“JJ.” Finally, firmer still, “Jean-Jacques.”

Hearing his full name, makes him bolt upright. His heart is pounding, his lungs are burning, his body aches, and he’s _still_ crying because he’s weak.

JJ swallows thickly. He can smell the thick scent of stale beer and cigarette smoke. All he can see is the hot ember on the end of Otabek’s cigarette. It was Otabek that he went to bed with right? 

 “You were crying in your sleep,” Otabek offers in explanation. JJ reaches forward for him. He touches soft cotton. He feels hard muscle. He watches the cigarette cherry meander from one side to the other as Otabek changes it within his hands. Otabek hisses in a long and exaggerated exhale.  Then, there’s an arm around his waist, and lips against his sweat slicked forehead. It’s strange that he can be so tender after being so brutal to him. “Put your clothes on. We’re leaving.”

Through blurry tearstained vision, he can see the bright green letters on the alarm clock. They read 4:07 AM. “Where are we going?”

“I’m taking you home.”

JJ stiffens. “No,” he still didn’t know if he could trust Otabek. At the very least he thought he’d understand. “I’m not going back.”

“No,” Otabek says. Then Otabek’s chapped lips meet his own. “With me. To Vancouver.”

“I’m not going to Vancouver. I’m going to Montreal. I’m getting a job on the railroad.”

“I have a job waiting for me. It’s how I got my Visa. A room in an extended stay hotel. They told me there would be a sofa.”

“I’m sending for my girl,” JJ insists.

“Are you coming with me or not?”

* * *

JJ dresses slowly. He catches sight in the mirror, and he doesn’t even look like himself. He’s all puffy from crying. He’s all bruised up from Otabek. He looks like hell, and feels like hell. Yet, he can’t stop smiling, even when his lip is split open.

Otabek straps his backpack to the back of the bike. Otabek offers him a large black pullover to wear. All he has is the thin summer t-shirts that he left home with.

The bike dips low as Otabek tears down the onramp to Highway 1. The sun crawls up over the pavement and turns everything it touches to a smoky gold hue. Oranges and pinks chase away black and blue from the sky.

Otabek jams the throttle hard, and the engine kicks into another higher gear. With his arms around Otabek’s middle, and his lips against his leather clad shoulder, they barrel forward towards Vancouver.

 _Get into the car_  
_We'll be the passenger_  
_We'll ride through the city tonight_  
_See the city's ripped insides_  
_We'll see the bright and hollow sky_  
_We'll see the stars that shine so bright_  
_The sky was made for us tonight_


	2. Search & Destroy

_I am the world's forgotten boy_  
_The one who searches and destroys_  
_Honey gotta help me please_  
_Somebody gotta save my soul_  
_Baby, detonate for me_

Otabek has been called a lot of things, some of them true, and many of them negative. He doesn’t like to spend a lot of time or a lot of energy thinking about the kind of person that he is, or the impression that he leaves. Those kinds of concerns are best left to people with far fewer problems than him.  However, if there’s ever anything he considers himself to be, it’s that he’s a man of his word, and that he is patient.

Otabek’s gone from Quebec City to Vancouver by bike. Otabek put up with his father for seventeen straight years before jetting. Otabek peeled his mother off the kitchen floor for at least twelve years before realizing she was part of the problem too. Maybe just as bad as his father. Otabek saved every penny he made from his paper route, and his gig selling umbrellas in the city, and he did all of that on top of working in the store, where they never paid him a goddamn dime. So yeah, Otabek considers himself patient.

So, it’s a real problem when Sweet Jean starts wearing his patience thin.

At first, he kinda likes pumping nickels and dimes into the payphone for him whenever it beeps for more for the long distance charge. He likes rubbing his denim clad hard on up against JJ’s ass while he’s cooing into the phone to his girl back home, “I love you so much baby, I need you so much baby,” and repeats it all over again in French. He knows who JJ’s really talking to when he says it.

He loves latching onto JJ’s earlobe and nuzzling him real sweet like they’re boyfriends until his voice goes quiet on the receiver, and he can feel his breath pick up when he’s got his hand rucked up underneath his shirt. He waits for the pause on the line when his girl, Isabella goes, “JJ are you still there?”

And in synchrony he bites down just as soon as JJ croons, “yes,” and the croaked needy sound is the best thing in the world to Otabek. After that, JJ will kick him away and tell Isabella, “No, everything’s fine,” and Otabek will retreat to the other side of the payphone and smoke until he knows that JJ needs another dime.

* * *

At first, he kinda likes it when he comes home from a twelve hour shift and JJ’s got dinner waiting for him. It’s never _good_. It’s always warm cans of Miller Lite or half emptied bottles of Night Train. When JJ’s half drunk and ready to fuck and dinner is forgotten…Well those are the best nights of all.

It’s always garbage food like Kraft Dinner, noodles and spaghetti sauce with no meat, or instant ramen with egg cracked over the top. That’s all that they can afford.

Then, JJ makes that warm and welcome feeling go away too. The food gets markedly better: burgers cooked over their single hot plate, or a bucket of chicken from the takeaway place. Except, Otabek doesn’t start giving him more money, and JJ is still looking for a job. Instead of telling him that he’s getting picked up for construction jobs, and shoveling snow for all the businesses on Broad street, he tells Otabek, “You’re always telling me how pretty I am Beks,” when Otabek asks where he got the money. “So I made us some the old fashioned way. You know,” and then he smiles at him like it’s the funniest thing in the world. “Like how I used to.”

The way he says it pisses him off because even though he knows he’s got JJ wrapped around his finger, and there’s nobody else, Sweet Jean needs to remember his place. So he gets JJ when he’s in the bathroom. He’s wiped the mirror off, and shaved his face. Little white flecks of Barbasol are still on his jawline when Otabek rips the rough motel towel away, fumbles for the little container of Vaseline they keep in the medicine cabinet, and slams inside.

He makes JJ watch himself. He makes JJ promise he’ll never say anything like that ever again, even it’s a joke.

JJ rips the door off of the medicine cabinet scrambling for purchase while he pounds into him. Otabek is up half the night trying to reattach it with the tools that he’s got. The whole time JJ sits on the bed just barely in his field of vision. He’ll get himself hard with long hard pumps of his cock, and then let go. He’ll flip through the channels like it’s the most interesting thing in the world, “come to bed, Seven Samurai is on Otabek.”

And, “I can fix that in the morning,” except he won’t. He’ll pick up a roofing job and when he’s finished he’ll drink with the girls in the next room. And, “Need you again.”

* * *

Speaking of the girls in the next room…They’re nothing but trouble, and he and JJ both know it. The one girl’s name is Mila, and she comes and knocks on the door and asks for a cigarette every time that Sweet Jean walks down to the corner store to get them a few bottles of Night Train.

Today’s no different, except JJ is actually in the room with him. He’s taking a shower after Otabek made him sit on his cock and pumped him full of cum.

She stands wide in the doorway showing off every inch of embroidery on her pink silk robe. Whenever she moves like this, the robe gets pulled open across her chest showing a tattoo of a monarch butterfly just above her left breast. She talks to him in Russian.

Otabek could not be less affected. He shakes a single Winston out, and balances it between her long acrylic nails. Usually he shuts the door right in her face. Tonight she gets a few words in edgewise. In a slew of words in a language that he hasn’t heard for a long time, “Give me one like his,” she says referring to the marks that he constantly leaves on JJ’s skin. “He’s so hard. Don’t you want something soft baby?”

As if on cue the tap creaks when JJ turns off the water. He can hear the sound of the shower curtain being pulled back, and in that moment Otabek steps away from the door frame. He can tell when JJ’s walked out of the bathroom, naked and inevitably half hard again. Even though he’s facing away from JJ he can tell.  Her eyes go wide like dinner plates.

He calls out to him, his face probably still buried in a damp towel as he dries his hair, “I was hoping you’d come and shower with me.”

At the same time she whispers a rushed, “thanks” under her breath when she turns on her heels to leave.

* * *

Mila claims to have a sister. Except, one time Otabek saw her with her tongue crammed down her ‘sister’s’ throat and her hand up underneath her ‘sister’s’ skirt. Still, Mila calls him that.  It takes Otabek a few days to realize _she_ is a boy that doesn’t look much older than fifteen or sixteen. He runs around in opaque white thigh highs and cut off jean shorts, and he thinks he’s hot shit. He drapes himself all over Mila and tries to get a reaction wherever he can, but Otabek knows what he’s about. He’s seen the look in his eyes before. He sees it in JJ every single night when he wakes up sobbing. 

On Sundays the bakery on the corner of 9th and Neil mark down their doughnuts to half price after the church crowd. JJ always gets some for them both, because Jean is sweet, and he likes his sweets. Otabek is out lingering in the parking lot one Sunday afternoon. JJ’s been gone way too long for _just_ doughnuts, and he’s blowing off steam by running laps in the parking lot. Shirtless of course, just in case he happens to run into JJ on his way back from the store.   

There are three buildings in the square. The motel, and the 24 hour pancake house, and the check cashing place, and Otabek runs the loop until his chest hurts and he feels like he’s going to throw up on the concrete. He runs until his whole body begs him to stop and he’s aching for a cigarette.

Otabek rounds the bend on what has to be his hundredth lap, and when he does he sees Yuri kicking JJ with a spike heel.

JJ blocks the kick and grabs the scuffed pointed patent leather shoe easily. He pulls Yuri forward by the toe, and exclaims, “Princess Yuri!” And he can hear the uneasy timbre in JJ’s voice. He laughs uneasily, and Otabek can tell that he’s anxious.

There’s the other obvious issue. He doesn’t miss the way that Yuri’s miniskirt rides high on his thighs. He doesn’t miss the way that JJ’s eyes wander. “Have a treat.”

The whole scene makes his blood boil. No one treats JJ like that. JJ doesn’t look at anyone like that.

Otabek strides up to them and desperately tries to conceal the fact that his heart races, and it’s from much more than running. Immediately he wedges his body between JJ and Yuri. “Sweet Jean.”

JJ melts into him, and for a second every bit of the constant dread and the nudging anxiety fade away. “Beks!” and then he’s extracting another doughnut from the bag and trying to feed it to him. “You’re working too hard! Have some!”

“What’s with you asshole?” Yuri spits on the pavement.

* * *

Otabek gets home from work one afternoon to find the room empty. He’s taking a piss when he can hear JJ’s voice from the other side of the wall. It’s booming, and it’s bright, “Ladies, _that’s_ JJ style.”

Otabek closes his eyes. He counts backwards from ten. It’s not worth getting worked up over.

Until he hears a bang and a shout from the next room, “shut the fuck up asshole. Get the fuck out of my room!”  That kind of deep voice that _shouldn’t_ belong to a kid who weighs 115 pounds in his platform heels. Then, there’s whimper through the paper thin walls, followed by a muddled, barely discernable, “stop kicking me.”

So he tugs his pants closed and bolts out of the room without even locking the door behind him. As fast as he moves, it doesn’t stop him from slamming his fist into the thin particleboard door of the closet to their room.

Otabek pounds on the door demanding entry. Mila opens it in a red satin nightie. JJ’s sitting on the floor and Yuri’s kicking him in the shin. He’s wearing purple satin that rides up high with every movement of his long dancer legs. Cigarette burns stretch out across the floor like ugly black track marks in collapsed veins, and it makes his skin crawl just stepping inside of the room.  “Time to come home Jean.”

“Otabek,” his voice is a thick syrupy drawl. There are several discarded bottles of vanilla schnapps around them. JJ sips from a can of coke.  “Don’t be upset. Yuri’s just playing.”

“No one touches you except for me.”  Nobody hurts him, not even Otabek if JJ isn’t up for it. For every rough fuck they’ve had, Otabek’s stayed up all night holding Jean when he cries in his sleep.

Otabek can feel his short clipped nails dig into the flesh of his hand. He can feel his jaw set firm. He can see red hot rage tunnel his vision. How the hell does JJ not understand? He doesn’t worry about where they’re getting their next meal. He doesn’t worry that his job will last. He doesn’t worry that the engine’s gonna go on the bike.

He worries that JJ, sweet and pretty like he is gonna go back to turning tricks. He’s smarter now, and he’s bulkier now that he eats every day. He could hold his own. He could make a lot of money, because he’s beautiful. He worries that JJ is gonna start his job at the docs next week and decide that he doesn’t need him anymore.

Otabek can remember hauling JJ up by the collar of his t-shirt. That’s it.

* * *

“This isn’t the first time we’ve been called out to the Southwind because of the two of you.” Officer Moreau, because he _has_ been out here before, looks him up and down for what must be the twentieth time like that’s supposed to do something to Otabek. Make him feel something. “You’re on Visa. I’d be careful if I were you.”

“Didn’t hit him,” Otabek spits quickly before biting his own lip hard. He needs a smoke right now, but the asshole cop won’t let him.

“He’s got a lot of bruises. How’d he get those?”

Otabek turns to the side. He can see JJ standing against the rough stucco of the motel’s exterior. JJ’s movements are animated to the point of being exaggerated and frantic. Otabek can’t hear what he’s saying to the cop, but he can feel the way that JJ looks at him. He’s worried, and what he needs right now isn’t some pig telling him that he can trust them. What JJ needs is him, and he can’t provide that if he’s cuffed and leaning against the bumper of the cop car.  Otabek can see the dark purple bruises on his neck and on his arm against the oscillating light of the cop car siren. He debates telling the good officer that the bruises on his arm came from trying to desperately calm JJ down when he was having a panic attack.

“I don’t hit him,” Otabek repeats. He has the sense to bite his tongue and hold back the remark, “even when he asks me to,” because JJ has, and Otabek won’t.  “That fucking kid kicked the shit out of him. Don’t see you doing anything about that.”

The argument spilled out into the parking lot, and as soon as the police rolled up, Yuri booked it down Broad Street heels and all.

* * *

“Baby, I was so worried.” JJ’s palming his ass through his jeans and humping his leg like he’s touch starved. Like he didn’t fuck him raw that morning. “Baby. Please. Don’t scare me like that again.”

Funny. Otabek could say the exact same thing to him.  “If you were so worried, why were you fucking around with them?” Otabek walks them to the bed, flops down upon it, and pulls JJ down on top of him. JJ’s gotta prove himself. “You know what they are.”

JJ peels his shirt away. Otabek sinks his teeth into the firm flesh of JJ’s pec, and it makes JJ moan like it’s the best thing in the world.

“Fuck yeah, Otabek. Play with my tits. Sweetheart, please.” JJ was always saying things that _almost_ sounded sexy, but ended up being too round and cumbersome around the edges. Didn’t matter. JJ fucking did it for him every time, even if he was running his mouth.

Otabek does as he’s asked anyway, because JJ looks so good when his nipples are red and raw. He feels so good about himself whenever JJ has to wear a baggy shirt to keep the cloth from rubbing up against the overstimulated skin.

He lets JJ undress him nice, and slow, and sweet, as JJ likes to do. He lets JJ kiss over the expanse of his skin, play with his nipples til their hard, and kiss down his stomach until he’s tearing at the waistband of his pants and drooling on his cock. Cause, if there’s one thing his sweet Jean liked to do, it was suck cock. 

“Baby, let me make it up to you,” and JJ reaches for the container of Vaseline that’s become a permanent fixture in their lives. He pours it all over Otabek’s cock. “Lemme show you.”

Otabek watches JJ finger himself. He doesn’t have to see his hole to know that he’s got one finger jammed inside already. He can tell by the way that his voice hitches, and his pupils dilate wide.

“You wanted all of this to happen.” He knows that JJ likes to push his buttons. Likes to get him so worked up that he sees red, and he feels like killing someone.

JJ moves up his body, straddles his waist, and sinks down in a motion that’s fluid, and practiced, but done for him and only for him. JJ makes all kinds of noises as he hovers on the tip of his cock and then slams down, impaling himself. “Lord, Otabek, damn.” He speeds up, rocking his hips, and expecting Otabek to react.

He stays stock still.

“I’ve just been missing you so bad. You’re gone all the time. I wake up and-Ah-” He can see his eyes roll to the back of his skull in pleasure. “And you’re gone. I don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t know where you’re going. Otabek,”

And damn, if that doesn’t tear out something raw and something powerful within Otabek. He slams his hips upward into JJ when he’s on the down stroke. He takes his dick into his hand, and pinches him, hard, effectively ruining the orgasm that had been building for JJ.

JJ cries out for mercy, for release, but it doesn’t come. Otabek brings him to the edge and holds him there three more times.

“Baby, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”

“That’s not good enough for me,” Otabek says in pained grunts. It’s difficult for him to keep his cool. Especially with JJ on top like this.

“I’ll be good.”

“I’m gonna make you be good.”

“I promise, Otabek.”

“That’s not enough Jean,” he repeats.

“I love you.”

Otabek keeps fucking him even though those three little words make him shoot right away. Like they’re fucking boyfriends, and JJ means it. Otabek keeps his fist on JJ’s cock, and doesn’t let go until tears run down his face in overstimulation and his own hand is covered in JJ’s come.

Over a Winston he decides that he deserves every second of torture that JJ drags him through.

* * *

 

JJ takes a job at the docs with him and they work all winter. They don’t emerge from the constant onslaught of wakeup-work-sleep until the first blossoms on the redbud trees start poking out mid-April. Their faces and hands are still chapped and red with windburn. Otabek still can’t shake the cold from his limbs. Yet, the pull of the road is too powerful.

It’s disconcerting when they ride out to Stein Park after twenty-eight grueling days of continuous work, and JJ keeps suspiciously quiet. At first, it’s difficult to tell that anything is wrong. JJ races him from the motel room to the car park where he keeps the bike. With his long legs, Otabek doesn’t have a chance, so he just watches JJ move. His stride is long, graceful, enviable even. He laughs in Otabek’s ear when he turns the engine over.

When Otabek stops at the filling station, and JJ doesn’t go poking around looking for snacks he has his suspicions. When there a bunch of unwashed and unkempt kids running in between gas pump terminals, and he doesn’t try to play with them, he knows for sure. JJ loves kids to a fault. No matter how tired they are after work, he’s always willing to stop and push the kids on the old rusted out swings at the pathetic patch of browned grass called a park they cut through.

Otabek isn’t quite sure how to ask JJ what’s wrong. For a split second it makes him tremble with rage that he’s so broken and so fucked up he can’t even do that much. Then, he decides that the next best option is to fix the problem without so asking what’s going on. They take the bike up the mountain until the air gets thin and cool. Otabek parks at a scenic stop. Then, he leads JJ by the hand in the opposite direction towards the woods away from the road, the picnic tables, and the park benches.

It’s like JJ already knows, “what are you gonna show me Beks? Something good? I bet it’s gonna be real good.”

“Really good,” Otabek agrees as he sinks to his knees. “Drop your pants. Turn around.”

It’s not Otabek’s best decision. JJ gets wild whenever he eats his ass. It’s the kind of thing that’s better to do on the bed, or against a wall, or on the carpet so he can hold JJ against something and keep him still. But, JJ’s a good boy and braces himself against a tree right away.

Otabek doesn’t play nice. Nice boys like JJ aren’t for playing nice with. He finds all the places on JJ’s ass and on his thighs that are raspberry lined with yellow bruises, and draws them back out to a deep but mottled shade of purple.

Otabek doesn’t call him Sweet Jean for nothing. He’s just that. Sweet. Even after a day of being in a musty cargo ship, even after sweating away a cold sweat under thick wool coveralls, JJ tastes sweet, and today is no exception. He licks a long wide stripe across JJ’s hole and holds onto his hips hard as he bucks against the action.

“Shit, Otabek!”

JJ crunches leaves underfoot. They can hear the cars from the highway just a few feet away, but its here that he finally feels safe. It is only here that he feels that he can be here with JJ and he can have JJ without the risk of anyone snatching him away.

Otabek rakes his teeth against JJ’s hole, and loves the way the catch and the drag makes him beg. “Can I touch myself?”

Otabek cranes his neck so he can meet JJ’s gaze. Gunmetal gray eyes blown wide are the best thing to see because JJ’s eyes are prettier than mountains, and forest, and the wide open road. “I don’t think so.”

“You’re so mean to me.” JJ wriggles his ass at him. JJ bucks his hips, and Otabek does his very best to hold on as he plunges his tongue inside. “I polished your boots. I won you $5 on a scratcher. I sucked your cock.”

Otabek ignores JJ’s increasingly desperate and incoherent pleas. He takes his fill of the other man, plunging his tongue deep inside, spitting against his hole, and pushing it in as deep as it will go.

He stands up, whips JJ around, and makes him suck his cock long enough just to get it wet.

Then, he’s got JJ bracing himself up against the tree again, and he’s slamming in. Hard. “After you wore them out and got them dirty. After you spent twenty, and you _love_ to suck my cock.”

Neither of them last long. JJ’s so tight, and clenches down on him so good.  He has to tell him, “touch yourself now,” so he doesn’t come before JJ. 

Otabek pulls out and comes on his tattoo, the one that he’s convinced he got to drive him absolutely crazy. It’s like a target that he’s got to hit each and every time. Afterward, he offers JJ his handkerchief to clean up. This time, he accepts.

JJ takes him by the elbow and weaves him through the trees and the brush back towards the road. He holds back branches and clears away spider webs.

When they get to the road, Otabek tosses JJ the keys. “Here.” He has to. JJ’s got his hooks in deep. It’s not just with his giant cock that flops against his stomach when they fuck, and his tight ass. It’s also with his smile and his laugh. He’s forced Otabek’s hand, and Otabek is almost ready to call the bet.

JJ’s eyes go wide. “Really Otabek?” His jaw hangs open, and his eyes are glassy, almost sparkling. There it is.

“I’m tired. You should drive.”

So JJ turns the engine over on the first go, and the action is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. He doesn’t throw all of his weight into it, just enough to make the engine turn over. He keeps balance of the bike, and leans forward so Otabek can get on. The fluid motion takes a fraction of a second, but it makes time stand still for Otabek.

When JJ hits the ramp to get back onto the highway, Otabek feels like all his joints popped at once, or like he’s taking off his boots after a long, long shift. The wind whips his mouth into a smile, and then he has no choice but to keep it that way, cause by the time he realizes that he’s doing it, JJ’s going 100 and there’s no chance in hell he’s slowing down any time soon.

When they get into the city limits they hit traffic. JJ fidgets on the seat, and Otabek assumes that it’s cause even though he took his time and fucked him real slow and real sweet, they did it on nothing but spit and patience alone. Not to mention, Otabek’s patience is wearing thin.

Then, JJ pulls over at the Stop N’ Go a few exits before the one they take to go home. They have food, they have smokes, they have plenty of gas in the tank. The suspicion that had been abated earlier comes back tenfold, and his heart thunders in his chest.

JJ parks the bike near the payphone.

Otabek watches in fast forward-slow motion as he moves his long lanky body the few steps over to the payphone and drops two quarters in.

Otabek wants to say something, but the words don’t come. His ears ring, and he can feel the sharp taste of bile rising up in his throat. It’s like he’s a kid again, and his father’s pissed off. He’s got to do something, but every possible course of action is going to be wrong.

“Mama?” JJ wraps the cord around his finger.

And just like that, in an instant the thunder in his chest is gone, and replaced with nothing at all. Cause Otabek can handle JJ when he’s talking to his girl. It makes him red in the face, and harder than he’s ever been in his life, but he can handle it. Girls meet new boys and move on. Boys like JJ decide that they like cock better anyway. This on the other hand…It was permanent, and it ran much deeper, and there was _nothing_ someone like him could do about it.

“I’m fine. I promise I’m fine. I’m in Vancouver. I just went to Stein Park with my friend. It’s so beautiful Mama, have you ever been?” Then, he can hear it. He’s the only one who ever hears it with JJ, because…because JJ needs him to. He needs someone to pay attention, and he needs someone to pull him back. He needs someone to tell him not to think when it’s all too much. He can hear it. JJ’s voice cracks after a long pause on his end of the line, and then he’s talking again, “It’s not that I don’t want to talk to dad. Just, not today?” JJ speaks quickly. “I’ll call again maybe next week? No, I don’t have a phone.”

Otabek doesn’t lean over him and breathe hotly into his ear the way he does whenever he’s on the phone with Isabella. He doesn’t hook his fingers into the belt loops on JJ’s pants, or touch any inch of skin he can find. He untwists JJ’s fingers from around the metal phone cord, and he squeezes tight.

“No mama, I can’t come home. Not yet. I like it here,” JJ looks at him around the receiver. His eyes soften, and the worry leaves his voice once again. “A lot.”

The conversation lasts no more than ten minutes, but Otabek burns through two and a half cigarettes in that time. He lights them end to end so that he doesn’t have to unlace his hand from JJ’s. He watches his shaky hand move the butt of the still burning smoke to the one that’s in his mouth, and he almost burns his lip several times. It’s like he’s a fucking addict, but goddamn he’s got it bad.

Afterwards JJ squeezes his hand real tight. “Thanks.” It makes his heart skip a beat and it makes his face feel hot. JJ kisses him. JJ bites his lower lip and tugs on it slowly like the way that molasses pours out of a bottle.  Otabek can feel his lip plump and grow fat under JJ’s attention. “Couldn’t have done it without you.”

Of course, that just pisses him off even more.

* * *

Otabek has never had the time to cultivate a talent. His grandma took him to piano and dance lessons when he was a kid. That didn’t last long though. His dad said they’d make him queer, and he needed to start working at the store. Otabek did wrestling after that, but he never learned the moves, just got benched for socking assholes in the gut. He doesn’t really know how to do anything, or how to make anything.

If anything, Otabek has a talent for picking up troubled boys.

It’s well after midnight, but he can’t sleep. He’s burned through a pack of Winstons and fucked JJ until they were both coming dry. JJ’s asleep, and now there’s nothing left to do.

Otabek stands out in the parking lot, smoking and staring. He can see Yuri hobble across the parking lot. The street lamps showcase every awkward motion. The still of the night makes every soft sob echo off the buildings.  

Otabek puts out the butt with a long exasperated sigh. He closes the distance between them. “Let me help you,” and he crouches down, offering him a piggy back ride.

“Why the fuck are you helping me?”

“I can’t stand you,” Otabek admits. “You’re not good to JJ, but.” He stands so that he can look Yuri in the eyes. His face is puffy and red from crying. “I always tend to dislike people that are more similar to me than not at first.” Otabek doesn’t want to keep talking, but the words just spill out. How come they never came out this easily when he wanted them to?  “But I can see it in your eyes. You’re just biding your time until you can grab whatever it is you’re after and take it.”  Otabek offers him his arm. “Coming or not?” he’s not going to beg to carry a brat to his doorstep.

 Yuri climbs onto his back and he cannot help but notice how his knees and his elbows dig into his skin. He’s so hard and so angular…”Can you take me over there?” Yuri points. “To the payphone?” Which is _much_ further away than his motel room. No good deed goes unpunished. “Do you have fifty cents? I want to call my grandpa.”

* * *

 

Pumping the payphone with $1.75 in spare change was the right thing to do. Firing up the bike, and feeling Yuri’s thin arms wrapped around him was the right thing to do. Buying Yuri a bus ticket home, giving him fifty dollars, and shaking his hand man to man…That was the right thing to do too.

But doing all of that made him think of JJ. If any of it happened to JJ, would it be the right thing to do?

Otabek decides that it doesn’t matter. He said that he liked it here. He said that he didn’t want to come home.

Otabek finally feels like he’s falling. He’s falling into the mattress, and for a moment, everything is okay. He’s got JJ next to him, naked and beautiful. They have time off, because a few shipments were lost in the storm. There isn’t enough work, but it’s okay because he’s got nine hundred dollars weighing down his wallet. Otabek is falling into a peaceful sleep, possibly for the first time in months when JJ shakes him awake.

“Otabek,” JJ’s shaking him awake. He doesn’t sound upset or even anxious, but there’s a tinge of urgency in his voice. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

* * *

 

Otabek has been called a lot of things, some of them true, and many of them negative. He doesn’t like to spend a lot of time or a lot of energy thinking about the kind of person that he is, or the impression that he leaves. Those kinds of concerns are best left to people with far fewer problems than him. However, if there’s ever anything he considers himself to be, it’s that he’s a man of his word, and that he is patient.

  
Except, it’s been almost a year since he met Sweet Jean. He’s never kept anyone around for that long. He’s never had reason to. Now, he’s wearing his patience real thin. Something’s got to be done.

  
They met her ‘halfway’ in Winnepeg. JJ said she always visited her family right before school started in September. Otabek ignores the way that his stomach drops when he sees the beautiful girl at the end of the bar wearing a large straw sun hat.

Otabek tries to play it cool and steer himself toward a booth, but JJ drags him over to the bar too.

The tension in the room is thick as soon as they walk in. Maybe it’s because places like this don’t usually hold beautiful and fresh faced women inside. Maybe it’s because you aren’t supposed to be in a place like this during daylight. Maybe it’s because he felt JJ up, over the jeans under the shirt right before. He made sure to get him good and hard before they came in.

  
JJ orders her a cherry coke, but she doesn’t touch it. Her smile fades away too quickly. The thrill of seeing her man is gone as soon as she sees Otabek at his side. “I have a job now. I have $1200 saved up. I’m gonna get a car. Maybe a Monte Carlo.”

  
It’s something out of the soaps his mother used to watch on the black and white television they kept behind the counter at the family store. It’s thick, and melodramatic, and the fact that he was present only fed into the raw emotionality of it all. “You told me to wait for you JJ.” Her voice cuts through him like knives even though they’re meant for JJ. “I did,” and he hears her voice crack before he sees the tear stream down her face. ”Why didn’t you?”

  
“What do you mean? You’re the only girl for me.” JJ says it like he means it, because it’s mostly true. JJ hasn’t touched a woman since he picked him up.  
“Yeah right JJ.” Then she’s leaning over the table and pinching the near permanent hickey on the right side of his neck that he wears like a badge of honor.

  
She gets up, turns on her sharp heel, and then before he knows what’s going on, he’s got a cherry coke with ice dumped own the back of his jacket.  
Otabek doesn’t even have the heart to call out, “bitch,” after her. If anything, he kind of wants to chase after her and kiss her in thanks.

* * *

 

Otabek does his best to wash the cherry coke out of his hair in the bathroom sink. He’ll have to live with a damp shirt until they get back to the motel. He slicks back his hair the best that he can without having his pomade.

He’s about to turn on his heel and go find JJ, when JJ barges through the doors. He’s on him immediately with hands, and teeth, and tongue. JJ’s peeling away his wet shirt, and popping the button on his pants as if here isn’t enough liquor in the world that can soothe what just happened. Only Otabek. 

“If you want me to be sad for you, it’s not going to happen.” Otabek says as he fists his cock in his hand. He can see the slick reflective sheen of precum on the tip of his cock, and he can’t wait any longer. There’s nothing in the world that can make him feel empathetic.

Otabek presses JJ up against the rough brick wall. Cool air hits his skin as he shoves his pants down just enough. “I know.” He grunts as Otabek thrusts inside

 

“For what it’s worth Sweet Jean.” Otabek moves his hips slowly, in barely there circles. He dare not think of it as tender. “I meant it when you said you were mine.” 

 _Ain't got time to make no apology_  
_Soul radiation in the dead of night_  
_Love in the middle of a fire fight_  
_Honey, gotta strike me blind_  
_Somebody gotta save my soul_  
_Baby, penetrate my mind_

 _And I'm the world's forgotten boy_  
_The one who's searchin', searchin' to destroy_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell @ me on tumblr: boxwineconfession or twitter @confessionwine


End file.
